Biocareers: Some Advice for Would Be Entrepreneurs

More and more people are losing their corporate jobs because of the recession. The bleak job market coupled with diminishing opportunities for older, seasoned employees is forcing many to consider starting their own businesses to join the ranks of the self employed. However, before you take the leap, I highly recommend that you read Phyllis Korkki’s article in this Sunday’s New York Times entitled “Taking the Leap To Self Employment.

As a person who successfully made the leap, she offers amazing insights into what it really takes to be successful as an entrepreneur or small business owner. Most importantly, would be entrepreneurs must possess three important characteristics: motivation, drive and passion. If you lack any of the three, chances are that you are not cut out to be self employed or entrepreneurial enough to start your own company. Also, she aptly points out that one of the major drawbacks of self employment is loneliness. I cannot stress enough that this is the major complaint of most self employed persons that I know. 

While nobody wants to admit it, humans are social animals who need to interact with one another to fulfill the evolutionary need to be “social.” Luckily, the advent of social media has helped to overcome the daily loneliness experienced by many entrepreneurs and self employed persons. That said, before you make the leap, please read the article—it will help to determine whether or not self employment is right for you!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting

 

What Prescription Drugs are in Your Future?

Reuters, the news service, published a list of prescription drugs that are predicted to likely to be the top sellers in 2014. For comparison purposes, the forecasts for the top sellers predicted for 2010 were also included.

 

Projected Sales 2010

   

Rank

Brand (Indication)

Company

Sales ($bln)

1

Lipitor (cholesterol)

Pfizer

              11.7

2

Plavix (clotting)

Sanofi Aventis

                9.6

3

Advair(asthma-COPD)

GSK

                9.0

4

Remicade (arthritis)

J&J

                7.4

5

Enbrel (arthritis)

Pfizer

                7.0

6

Humira (arthritis)

Abbott

                6.8

7

Avastin (cancer)

Roche

                6.7

8

Rituxan (cancer)

Roche

                6.1

9

Diovan (hypertension)

Novartis

                6.0

10

Crestor (cholesterol)

AstraZeneca

                5.8

       
 

Projected Sales 2014

 

Rank

Brand (Indication)

Company

Sales ($bln)

1

Avastin (cancer)

Roche

                8.9

2

Humira (arthritis)

Abbott

                8.5

3

Enbrel (arthritis)

Pfizer

                8.0

4

Crestor (cholesterol)

AstraZeneca

                7.7

5

Remicade (arthritis)

J&J

                7.6

6

Rituxan (cancer)

Roche

                7.4

7

Lantus (diabetes)

Sanofi Aventis

                7.1

8

Advair(asthma-COPD)

GSK

                6.8

9

Herceptin (cancer)

Roche

                6.4

10

Novolog (diabetes)

Novo Nordisk

                5.7

 

A quick perusal of the list suggests that there will likely be a shift toward the use of injected biologics in 2014 as compared with orally bioavailable small molecule drugs.

This should come as no surprise since most major pharmaceutical companies have publicly announced that biologics and biotechnology drugs are the key to their future successes.

Until next time

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!

 

Economic Recovery: US Contract Biomanufacturing Companies Are Experiencing an Upswing

For the past decade or more, small to mid-sized biotechnology companies had been outsourcing production of their preclinical and clinical protein-based products to Asian contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs). This was because manufacturing and labor costs were lower and product quality was consistent with Western standards and requirements. However, the recent economic down turn coupled with rising prices at Asian CMOs (mainly driven by increasing labor and project management costs) has forced many small to mid-sized companies to rely again on American CMOs to manufacture their products. Unlike cash-rich, larger companies, US small to midsize companies generally lack the financial resources and personnel to effectively manage operations in Asia. Many industry analysts contend that the lower initial costs of Asia-based companies are usually offset by the money and resources need to oversee a project.

While business returning from Asia improved the financial outlook for some American CMOs, 2009 was a bad year for most firms that service small to mid-sized pharma and biotech companies. However, industry analysts expect 2010 to be better than 2009. More importantly, the return of biomanufacturing to the US may signal the beginning of a new trend in the biomanufacturing outsourcing industry.

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!!

 

Some Social Media Facts and Figures to Ponder

Much has been written about social media but who has time to ponder all the analytical data to come up with trends and cool statistics? 

To that end, I was reading Dec/Jan edition of Forbes Small Business (FSB) magazine and I came upon some random social media tidbits that I thought were worth sharing.  I cannot vouch for the veracity of the information but sources were cited to confirm the facts.

35% of Americans 18 and over used social media of some type in 2008; only 8% were involved with social media in 2005 (source: Pew Internet and American Life Project)

95% of business decision makers worldwide use social networks (source: Forrester Research)

Of 2000 recent tweets that were analyzed by Peer Analytics:

  • 4% were spam
  • 6% were self promotional
  • 9% were “moderately interesting”
  • 38% were conversational
  • 43% were “babble”

Finally (and not surprisingly):

87% of adults said they prefer dealing with others in person instead of via computers or smart phones (source: Centralvalleybusinesstimes.com)

I am not sure what it all means but I figured the info was worth a shout out.

Hat tip to FSB!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Networking

 

The World's Best Places For Small Businesses

 

Each year the World Bank compiles a report that assesses the world’s friendliest business climates for small companies. The top three companies on this year’s list, Singapore, New Zealand and the US have been there four years in a row. The real shocker this year was that several previously lagging nations moved up on the list, mostly because of business-friendly reforms. This year’s most improved nation is Azerbaijan, which moved up 64 spots to a overall ranking of 33rd because it reduced the time required to start a new business from 122 to 16 days, reforming its civil code and creating an online tax filing system.

Singapore has habitually been number one on the list because of its low import and export costs, strong government-imposed legal protections for investors and lopsided, employer-friendly labor regulations. The US placed high on the list because its labor laws are among the least rigid in the world and because business can be started quickly with a minimum amount of “red tape”.

For those of you who may be interested the top ten list looks like this:

  1. Singapore
  2. New Zealand
  3. United States
  4. Hong Kong
  5. Denmark
  6. The United Kingdom
  7. Ireland
  8. Canada
  9. Australia
  10. Norway

To see the rest of the list and find out more about starting a small business in your own click here

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (why not start one?)